Sociology 2011
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Herbert Gintis – Samuel Bowles – Their Distribution Preferences, and That They Robert Boyd – Ernst Fehr (Eds.): Moral Do So Differently in Different Situations
Sociologický časopis/Czech Sociological Review, 2008, Vol. 44, No. 6 social capital theory, which shows that so- the face of the evolutionary logic in which cial collaboration is built on social networks material advantages can be achieved by that underlie norms of reciprocity and trust- adopting self-interested preferences? worthiness. The development of these pro- social dispositions is in turn enabled in so- Clara Sabbagh cieties that further extra-familial ties and University of Haifa disregard or transcend purely ‘amoral fa- [email protected] milist’ interactions [Banfi eld 1958]. This research project nevertheless References leaves several unresolved problems. First, Banfi eld, Edward C. 1958. The Moral Basis of a Backward Society. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. there is the problem of causality, which de- Camerer, Colin F. 2003. Behavioral Game Theory. rives from a major theoretical dilemma in New York: Russell Sage. the social sciences. To what extent are pro- Deutsch, Morton. 1985. Distributive Justice. New social dispositions the result of structur- Haven: Yale University Press. al constraints, such as market integration, Giddens, Anthony. 1997. Sociology. Cambridge, or rather an active element in structuring UK: Polity Press. these constraints [Giddens 1997]? Joseph Putnam, Robert D. 1993. Making Democracy Work. Henrich (Chapter 2) discusses this prob- Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton, NJ: lem on a theoretical level by explaining the Princeton University Press. different mechanisms through which the Sabbagh, Clara and Deborah Golden. 2007. ‘Jux- structure of interaction affects preferences. taposing Etic and Emic Perspectives: A Refl ec- tion on Three Studies on Distributive Justice.’ Yet only future longitudinal research will Social Justice Research 20: 372–387. -
Cultural Theorizing Has Dramatically Increased
Cultural CHAPTER 9 Theorizing Another Embarassing Confession Like the concept of social structure, the conceptualization of culture in sociology is rather vague, despite a great deal of attention by sociologists to the properties and dynamics of cul- ture. There has always been the recognition that culture is attached to social structures, and vice versa, with the result that sociologists often speak in terms of sociocultural formations or sociocultural systems and structures. This merging of structure and culture rarely clarifies but, instead, further conflates a precise definition of culture. And so, sociology’s big idea— culture—is much like the notion of social structure. Its conceptualization is somewhat meta- phorical, often rather imprecise, and yet highly evocative. There is no consensus in defini- tions of culture beyond the general idea that humans create symbol systems, built from our linguistic capacities, which are used to regulate conduct. And even this definition would be challenged by some. Since the 1980s and accelerating with each decade, the amount of cultural theorizing has dramatically increased. Mid-twentieth-century functional theory had emphasized the importance of culture but not in a context-specific or robust manner; rather, functional- ism viewed culture as a mechanism by which actions are controlled and regulated,1 whereas much of the modern revival of culture has viewed culture in a much more robust and inclusive manner. When conflict theory finally pushed functionalism from center stage, it also tended to bring forth a more Marxian view of culture as a “superstructure” generated by economic substructures. Culture became the sidekick, much like Tonto for the Lone Ranger, to social structure, with the result that its autonomy and force indepen- dent of social structures were not emphasized and, in some cases, not even recognized. -
Preferences Under Pressure
Eric Skoog Preferences Under Pressure Conflict, Threat Cues and Willingness to Compromise Dissertation presented at Uppsala University to be publicly examined in Zootissalen, EBC, Villavägen 9, Uppsala, Friday, 13 March 2020 at 10:15 for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. The examination will be conducted in English. Faculty examiner: Associate Professor Thomas Zeitzoff (American University, School of Public Affairs). Abstract Skoog, E. 2020. Preferences Under Pressure. Conflict, Threat Cues and Willingness to Compromise. Report / Department of Peace and Conflict Research 121. 66 pp. Uppsala: Department of Peace and Conflict Research. ISBN 978-91-506-2805-0. Understanding how preferences are formed is a key question in the social sciences. The ability of agents to interact with each other is a prerequisite for well-functioning societies. Nevertheless, the process whereby the preferences of agents in conflict are formed have often been black boxed, and the literature on the effects of armed conflict on individuals reveals a great variation in terms of outcomes. Sometimes, individuals are willing to cooperate and interact even with former enemies, while sometimes, we see outright refusal to cooperate or interact at all. In this dissertation, I look at the role of threat in driving some of these divergent results. Armed conflict is rife with physical threats to life, limb and property, and there has been much research pointing to the impact of threat on preferences, attitudes and behavior. Research in the field of evolutionary psychology has revealed that threat is not a singular category, but a nuanced phenomenon, where different types of threat may lead to different responses. -
Tribal Social Instincts and the Cultural Evolution of Institutions to Solve Collective Action Problems
UC Riverside Cliodynamics Title Tribal Social Instincts and the Cultural Evolution of Institutions to Solve Collective Action Problems Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/981121t8 Journal Cliodynamics, 3(1) Authors Richerson, Peter Henrich, Joe Publication Date 2012 DOI 10.21237/C7clio3112453 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Cliodynamics: the Journal of Theoretical and Mathematical History Tribal Social Instincts and the Cultural Evolution of Institutions to Solve Collective Action Problems Peter Richerson University of California-Davis Joseph Henrich University of British Columbia Human social life is uniquely complex and diverse. Much of that complexity and diversity arises from culturally transmitted ideas, values and skills that underpin the operation of social norms and institutions that structure our social life. Considerable theoretical and empirical work has been devoted to the role of cultural evolutionary processes in the evolution of social norms and institutions. The most persistent controversy has been over the role of cultural group selection and gene- culture coevolution in early human populations during Pleistocene. We argue that cultural group selection and related cultural evolutionary processes had an important role in shaping the innate components of our social psychology. By the Upper Paleolithic humans seem to have lived in societies structured by institutions, as do modern populations living in small-scale societies. The most ambitious attempts to test these ideas have been the use of experimental games in field settings to document human similarities and differences on theoretically interesting dimensions. These studies have documented a huge range of behavior across populations, although no societies so far examined follow the expectations of selfish rationality. -
Can Faith Be More Than a Side Show in the Contemporary Academy? by Robert Wuthnow Published On: Feb 12, 2007
Can Faith Be More Than a Side Show in the Contemporary Academy? By Robert Wuthnow Published on: Feb 12, 2007 Robert Wuthnow teaches sociology of religion and cultural sociology, specializing in the use of both quantitative and qualitative (historical and ethnographic) research methods. He has written America and the Challenges of Religious Diversity (Princeton University Press, 2005), and edited the Encyclopedia of Politics and Religion (Congressional Quarterly Books, 1998). The following essay will appear in The American University in a Postsecular Age: Religion and Higher Education (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2007), edited by Douglas Jacobsen and Rhonda Hustedt Jacobsen. Copyright © Oxford University Press. I am a sociologist by training and a dyed-in-the-wool empiricist by temperament, but the role of religion in the academy is not one that can be addressed from a firm empirical base. From time to time, one hears arguments that students are much more interested in religion or more comfortable expressing their faith on campus now than they were, say before the tragedy of September 11, 2001, or that faculty on secular campuses are more accepting of religious believers than they were a generation ago. We are tantalized in these speculations by the occasional result from national surveys of college freshmen or by reports of enrollments in religious studies courses.1 There are also the valuable historical studies that George Marsden, James Burtchaell, and others have done, or the more contemporary studies of Conrad Cherry, Richard Hughes, or John Schmalzbauer.2 Yet, whenever I approach this topic wearing my empiricist hat, I feel much less confident than I do about almost any other aspect of American religion. -
Social Capital and Community Governance Samuel Bowles And
Social Capital and Community Governance∗ Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis University of Massachusetts and Santa Fe Institute Amherst, Massachusetts, 01003 November 21, 2001 Abstract Social capital generally refers to trust, concern for ones associates, a will- ingness to live by the norms of one’s community and to punish those who do not. While essential to good governance, these behaviors and disposi- tions appear to conflict with the fundamental behavioral assumptions of eco- nomics whose archetypal individual—Homo economicus—is entirely self- regarding. By community governance we mean the structure of small group social interactions—distinct from markets and states—that, along with these more familiar forms of governance, jointly determine economic and social out- comes. We suggest that (i) community governance addresses some common market and state failures but typically relies on insider-outsider distinctions that may be morally repugnant; (ii) the individual motivations supporting com- munity governance are not captured by either the conventional self-interested preferences of Homo economicus or by unconditional altruism towards one’s fellow community members; (iii) well-designed institutions make commu- nities, markets and states complements, not substitutes; (iv) with poorly de- signed institutions, markets and states can crowd out community governance; (v) some distributions of property rights are better than others at fostering community governance and assuring complementarity among communities, states and markets; and (vi) far from representing holdovers from a premod- ern era, the small scale local interactions that characterize communities are likely to increase in importance as the economic problems that community governance handles relatively well become more important. ∗ For a symposium to appear in the Economic Journal, along with companion papers by Steven Durlauf, Ernst Fehr, Edward Glaeser, David Laibson, and Bruce Sacerdote. -
SOC 532: SOCIOLOGY of RELIGION Fall 2009 Richard L. Wood, Associate Professor of Sociology Thursdays 4:00-6:30 Pm, 1061 SSCI (Sociology Commons)
SOC 532: SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION Fall 2009 Richard L. Wood, Associate Professor of Sociology Thursdays 4:00-6:30 pm, 1061 SSCI (Sociology Commons) Office Hours: Mondays 2:00-3:00 p.m.1078 SSCI, 505-277-3945 Thursdays 2:00-3:00 p.m.1078 SSCI, 505-277-3945 or mornings at 401 Hokona-Zuni, by appointment via 277-1117 [email protected] fax: 505-277-1115 This course is designed to introduce students to a broad range of sociological work on religion. The course will emphasize the social and political implications of religious dynamics, but we will also pay attention to broader elements of religion. The field is a vast one, and even a serious, graduate-level course can only skim the surface; students are encouraged to delve more deeply into their particular interests via the term paper project. The course includes a variety of theoretical approaches, and comparative-historical, survey, network-analytic, and ethnographic methodological approaches are all included. We will discuss the relative advantages that different theoretical and methodological approaches offer for generating sociological insight into religion and society. The content of the course will be weighted heavily toward understanding religion and society in three settings: the United States, Latin America, and the Middle East. However, the theoretical and methodological tools learned will be useful for the sociology of religion in whatever settings draw your interests (and term papers can certainly be written on a wide variety of topic areas). Goals of the course: At the end of semester (if you prepare the readings well, engage actively in thoughtful discussion, and complete the other assignments), you will have laid strong intellectual foundations for doing graduate-level scholarship on religion (comprehensive exams, master’s thesis, dissertation research, etc.). -
Social Welfare and the Psychology of Food Sharing: Short-Term Hunger Increases Support for Social Welfare
January 2013 Social Welfare and the Psychology of Food Sharing: Short-Term Hunger Increases Support for Social Welfare Michael Bang Petersen1*, Lene Aarøe1, Niels Holm Jensen2, and Oliver Curry3 1Department of Political Science & Government, Aarhus University, Aarhus, DK-8000 2Department of Psychology & Behavioral Sciences Aarhus University, Aarhus, DK-8000 3Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX2 6PN * Corresponding author: Email: [email protected] Accepted for publication in Political Psychology Abstract Do politically irrelevant events influence important policy opinions? Previous research on social welfare attitudes has emphasized the role of political factors such as economic self-interest and ideology. Here, we demonstrate that attitudes to social welfare are also influenced by short-term fluctuations in hunger. Using theories in evolutionary psychology, we predict that hungry individuals will be greedier and take more resources from others while also attempting to induce others to share by signaling cooperative intentions and expressing support for sharing, including evolutionarily novel forms of sharing such as social welfare. We test these predictions using self-reported hunger data as well as comparisons of subjects who participated in relevant online studies before and after eating lunch. Across four studies collected in two different welfare regimes—the UK and Denmark—we consistently find that hungry individuals act in a greedier manner but describe themselves as more cooperative and express greater support for social welfare. 1 Public opinion is the foundation of representative democracy—it drives electoral behavior and forms the basis for government formation. Politicians react to and anticipate changes in public opinion and it has an impact on policy, even between elections. -
SOCIOLOGY of RELIGION Robert Wuthnow These Readings Will Expose You to the Central Ideas That Have Shaped the Sociology of Relig
SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION Robert Wuthnow These readings will expose you to the central ideas that have shaped the sociology of religion. The list emphasizes major theoretical and theoretically informed substantive contributions, including some from anthropology and history as well as sociology. The basic readings are starred (*) and should be read carefully. Following each set of basic readings is a short selection of supplementary readings. These are meant to provide more recent and/or advanced understanding of how the core perspective has been extended or applied, or in some cases to suggest alternative approaches and applications. You should pick one of these supplementary readings from each section. In most instances, you may pick either a more theoretically oriented reading or a more empirically oriented study, depending on your interests. Mastering the basic readings and one supplementary reading from each section will give you about 90 percent of what you need to know for the General Examination in sociology of religion. The remaining 10 percent should be composed of recent literature in a sub- area related to your dissertation interests. The reading course will meet each week for one to one and a half hours. Please write and circulate a two-page memo in advance summarizing your thoughts about what you have read and raising questions for discussion. If the week's readings are new to you, focus on the basic readings; if you are already familiar with the basic readings, review them and come prepared to make a short presentation about one of the supplementary readings. For an extensive bibliography and sampling of topics covered in an undergraduate course in sociology of religion, see Meredith McGuire, Religion: The Social Context, 5th ed. -
An Introduction to Sociobiology: Inclusive Fitness and the Core Genome Herbert Gintis
An Introduction to Sociobiology: Inclusive Fitness and the Core Genome Herbert Gintis June 29, 2013 The besetting danger is ...mistaking part of the truth for the whole...in every one of the leading controversies...both sides were in the right in what they affirmed, though wrong in what they denied John Stuart Mill, On Coleridge, 1867 A Mendelian populationhas a common gene pool, whichis itscollective or corporate genotype. Theodosius Dobzhansky, Cold Springs Harbor Symposium, 1953. The interaction between regulator and structural genes... [reinforces] the concept that the genotype of the individual is a whole. Ernst Mayr, Populations, Species and Evolution, 1970 Abstract This paper develops inclusive fitness theory with the aim of clarifying its appropriate place in sociobiological theory and specifying the associated principles that render it powerful. The paper introduces one new concept, that of the core genome. Treating the core genome as a unit of selection solves problems concerning levels of selection in evolution. 1 Summary Sociobiology is the study of biological interaction, both intragenomic, among loci in the genome, and intergenomic, among individuals in a reproductive popula- tion (Gardner et al. 2007). William Hamilton (1964) extended the theory of gene frequencies developed in the first half of the Twentieth century (Crow and I would like to thank Samuel Bowles, Eric Charnov, Steven Frank, Michael Ghiselin, Peter Godfrey-Smith, David Haig, David Queller, Laurent Lehmann, Samir Okasha, Peter Richerson, Joan Roughgarden, Elliot Sober, David Van Dyken, Mattijs van Veelen and Edward O. Wilson for advice in preparing this paper. 1 Kimura 1970, B¨urger 2000, Provine 2001) to deal with such behavior. -
Review of Herbert Gintis's Individuality and Entanglement: the Moral And
Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics, Volume 11, Issue 1, Spring 2018, pp. 117-124. https://doi.org/10.23941/ejpe.v11i1.359 Review of Herbert Gintis’s Individuality and Entanglement: The Moral and Material Bases of Social Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017, 357 pp. MICHIRU NAGATSU University of Helsinki In his own words, Herbert Gintis’s latest book is “an analysis of human nature and a tribute to its wonders” (3).1 More prosaically, it is a collection of essays, some of which are original and others published elsewhere. Instead of being structured around topics in decision and game theory, like his previous book (2009), this book develops interrelated themes, such as the evolutionary origins of moral sense, its central role in political games, and the socially entangled nature of human rationality and individuality. Some chapters develop Gintis’s vision of the unified behavioral sciences by model-building demonstrations; others do so by reflecting on history and methodology. The demonstrative part of the book models the evolution of human socio-political systems, power relations in markets, altruism, voter turnout, and Walrasian dynamics—drawing on decision theory, game theory, evolutionary theory, and complexity theory. This part offers readers familiar with formal apparatus an excellent overview of the Gintis’s recent contributions to the field. The reflective part discusses the nature of rational actor models, provides an intellectual history of sociology and economics, and advocates the unification of the behavioral sciences. This part gives readers interested in history and philosophy of the behavioral sciences an insightful first-hand account by one of the leading figures in the field. -
Homo Socialis: an Analytical Core for Sociological Theory Herbert Gintis
Homo Socialis: An Analytical Core for Sociological Theory Herbert Gintis and Dirk Helbing October 9, 2013 Social life comes from a double source, the likeness of consciences and the division of social labor. Emile Durkheim We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Martin Luther King How ever selfish man may be supposed, there are evidently some princi- ples in his nature, which interest him in the fortuneof others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it. Adam Smith Abstract We develop an analytical core for sociology. We follow standard dynam- ical systems theory by first specifying the conditions for social equilibrium, and then study the dynamical principles that govern disequilibrium behavior. Our general social equilibrium model is an expansion of the general equi- librium model of economic theory, and our dynamical principles treat the society as a complex adaptive dynamical system that can be studied using evolutionary game theory and agent-based Markov models based on variants of the replicator dynamic. Affiliations: Gintis (Santa Fe Institute), Helbing (ETH Z¨urich). We would like to thank Samuel Bowles and Barkley Rosser for insightful suggestions. 1 1 Introduction Modern societies are complex dynamical systems in which social institutions are modified through high-level political decision-making and popular collective ac- tion (Helbing et al. 2005). We offer here an analytical framework for modeling the structure and dynamics of modern societies. We follow standard dynamical systems theory by first specifying the conditions for social equilibrium, and then studying the dynamical principles that govern disequilibrium behavior.